Dragon Prince 01 - Dragon Prince

by Melanie Rawn

  “I do,” Davvi said. “And he’s quite right. Go on, Maarken.”

  “Well, there was lots more. The Merida were strung around Tiglath like jewels on a necklace, Walvis said, but Kleve said they were more like insects caught in a spider-web, with lines of archers between. The wall collapsed and then they invaded, but Walvis was ready for them. Our people came out of the gates and took the battle out to the plain, and—” He paused for breath. “Walvis killed the leader and at least fifty more. Kleve and Feylin were watching but they lost count!”

  “Is Walvis hurt?” Rohan asked.

  “Just a scratch or two. He’s too good a warrior to be wounded. The fires to burn the Merida dead went on for three days. Walvis wants to march south now to defend Stronghold or come to us here.”

  Davvi gave a muffled exclamation. “Lleyn’s ships!”

  “Exactly.” Rohan nodded.

  “What ships?” Maarken asked.

  “Later,” Rohan ordered. “Davvi, would you see him to his tent for some rest, please? I’ll be with Chay.”

  As he mounted Pashta and rode slowly along the river-bank, he thought over Eltanin’s words. Walls stronger than stone, built by Rohan. The athri’s faith galled him. He would have to topple fortresses more formidable than castles if his dream was to come alive again within him. We hide behind our savagery, he thought bitterly. All of us. I have to destroy those walls before I can build others. And, more to the immediate point, he would have to demolish the very real fortress of Feruche, and quickly. Midwinter was approaching. He must finish things here, play the barbarian warrior prince with Roelstra, before doing the same thing at Feruche. But after that—Never again, I swear it, he told himself. Barbarian he might be, but he could put down his sword. He must. He could not live this way.

  Rohan had been correct about the masters’ reaction to Chay’s proposed use of their ships. But the transfer of troops, horses, and supplies to the Syrene bank of the Faolain was completed in two days, well south of the bridges where Roelstra had expected Rohan to cross. The High Prince had no opportunity to deploy his army for serious harassment of the move; there were brief skirmishes but Desert archers kept the losses minimal. A measure was marched off and a new camp established, and all was ready just before the next storm blew in from the north. Once more both sides settled in for the duration, polishing swords and keeping bow-strings dry.

  Lleyn’s ships had to wait in the mouth of the Faolain for a break in the weather. It was a long time coming, ten days before the fleet commander considered it safe to put out to sea again. Rohan and Chay watched the sails rise and fill with brisk wind, and knew that with the ships went any possibility of escape back across the river. They were in Syr for good or ill. Whatever the outcome of the battle, whenever it was fought, Rohan was oddly pleased to have his actions forced this way. Diminishing choices diminished interior conflict.

  He and Chay and Davvi formulated endless plans, fighting battles on maps to explore tactics, arguing placement and timing. It was all they could do until their scouts reported back, and when they did, the news was bad. In the brief two-day stretch of sun that had allowed the ships to set sail, Roelstra’s army had moved back yet again and in doing so seemed to have multiplied twofold.

  The morning brought a freezing mist as the trio rode out with their squires and captains to investigate for themselves. Rohan shivered beneath a heavy cloak, cursing the clouds that hung rain-heavy in the north. But what he saw from the top of a hill chilled him more thoroughly than the wind.

  The whole of the pastureland that had lately been the High Prince’s camp was awash in thigh-deep water. Trenches had been dug from tributaries of the Faolain. When added to the already saturated earth, the river water had turned a two-measure-wide plain into a lake. Crossing was impossible; the bottom was thick, viscous mud like that around the lake’s edges. Drainage ditches and a whole summer’s heat would be required to bake the land dry again. But there was something more, something only Roelstra in his cunning would have thought of, something that had ruined this rich land forever.

  “Do you smell it?” Rohan asked softly. “Salt.” He heard Davvi’s despairing curse, Chay’s sharp intake of breath. Rohan breathed deeply of the distinctive bite on the wind. “I suppose the trees were too wet for burning, or he would have done that, too,” he commented. Then he turned Pashta and rode back to his tent, and did not admit anyone until nightfall.

  When Chay was at last told that Prince Rohan wished to speak with him, he entered the tent in the liveliest apprehension of what he would find. Rohan sat on his cot, round-shouldered, an empty bottle overturned on the carpet and a half-empty one between his boots. There was a goblet in his hands and he turned it around and around in some private ritual before each swallow, five times before drinking. Chay watched this for a while, wondering if the remedy of liquor applied to Rohan’s wounds would dull them for at least a little while. But when the blue eyes finally lifted to his, he knew the pain was as piercing as ever.

  “Sit down,” Rohan said, and it was not an invitation. “This time I have to talk. And this time you’ll listen to me.”

  Chay sat. He was not offered a cup and would not have accepted one. Rohan stared at him for the time it took to rotate the goblet again, five times before taking another sip. His voice and his eyes were stone cold sober.

  “I’ve told myself I’m clever and civilized. I’ve said that my goal is the rule of law, not that of the sword. And look what I’ve done. I was raised a prince to protect and nurture the land and my people.” Another sip, sensitive fingers turning the goblet round and round. “I’m no better than any man who’s gone before me. I’ve told myself I’m only doing what I have to do. But I’ve got a real talent for this, Chay. I’m proficient in all the barbarian arts—war, rape—”

  Rohan drank and leaned over to refill the goblet with alarmingly steady hands. “Azhrei. They’ve never called anyone that before, not even my father. Eltanin is going to leave the wall in rubble—and do you know why? He thinks the walls I’ll build to protect the Desert will be better than any stone. I’m not worthy of that kind of trust. I’m not worthy of anything except to die with a sword in my guts, the way I’ve killed others. The way I’ll kill again.”

  Not analytical by nature, still Chay could discern the vast difference between these weary, nearly emotionless musings and the anger of Rohan’s arrival that summer. Then he had seethed with fury and guilt, seeking refuge in words and begging Chay for the negation of them that would signal forgiveness. But now he was merely resigned, a man looking at himself from outside himself, knowing there was no excuse—and not seeking any.

  “I enjoyed slaughtering Jastri’s army. I enjoyed raping Ianthe. I’m going to love destroying Roelstra. Look what that makes of me.”

  “It makes you a man like all the rest of us,” Chay said quietly.

  A tiny smile touched Rohan’s lips. “Do you know how galling that is for someone like me?”

  “You don’t understand,” Chay said, struggling to find the words. It was so important that they be the right ones. “You’re like us, but unlike. Rohan, you’ve tried. You have the courage of your dreams—when most of us don’t even know how to dream. You know this isn’t the way to live, always at each other’s throats. Your people trust you because they know the sword goes against your nature. It takes greater courage to—”

  “To live by it when it’s not of my choosing? Oh, but I chose it, you know. I’m doing a very good job of living with my sword in hand.”

  “But when this is over, there’s something more for you—and for everyone else.”

  “Yes, of course. I can force everyone to do things my way, and that will make me into another Roelstra. Nothing better than he, in spite of my pretensions. I’d do anything to butcher him and his army, and I’ve done everything to secure myself a son. But there’s one thing I have that he tried to get and failed. I have my very own Sunrunner, and I can use her without first binding her to me with dranat
h. She’s all mine, Chay, just as Andrade planned she’d be.” He lifted the goblet again, but this time did not drink. “What gives me the right?”

  Chay heard emotions battling to break through the calm facade, and sent up a small whisper of thanks. A Rohan pretending detachment from himself was a Rohan who had nearly lost himself. “Power frightens you,” Chay murmured. “You use it, but you don’t feed off it the way Roelstra always has.”

  “And that gives me the right? The fact that I’m a coward?”

  “You’re not listening to me.” Chay leaned forward in his chair, speaking quickly so Rohan would not be able to withdraw again into the unfeeling shell. “With you, we’ve got a chance for life. You’re our only hope. Do you think I enjoy seeing my son at war? Gentle Goddess, he just turned twelve! What makes you different is that you hate all this! You fear power and you’re scared you won’t use it wisely—Sioned’s power, too, and she’s just like you! That makes you the prince and princess we need! Do you think she’s not frightened by her power?”

  Rohan flinched. “I saw my son in her Fire. I can’t deny him—no matter who his mother is.”

  “If Sioned has courage enough to take him, can’t you find enough to accept him as yours and hers, and not Ianthe’s?”

  “Make believe he wasn’t born of rape?” Rohan shook his head bitterly, blond hair lank and dull in the lamplight. “It’s not just Ianthe. I’d be raising the grandson of the High Prince.”

  “Rohan, it’s a baby! What fault can there be in an innocent child?”

  “His birth!” Rohan threw the goblet across the tent and the wine made a crimson splash against the fabric, dripping down onto the carpet. “He should have been Sioned’s!”

  “What makes you think he won’t be? Maarken is as much Lleyn’s now as he is Tobin’s and mine. Rohan, there’s no two people in the world who are solely responsible for what a child becomes. Ianthe may have the bearing of him, but he’ll be yours and Sioned’s to raise.”

  Rohan lay back on the cot and stared up at the tent roof, silent for a long time. At last he sighed quietly and said, “You’re right about power. It terrifies me. Not the everyday kind princes have—deciding who has the better claim to grazing lands, ordering a new keep built or an old one replenished. It’s this kind of power, Chay—an army around me, power at my disposal just because I’m a prince and I decide who’s going to die. I’ll accept it as a responsibility, but I won’t believe that there’s anything about me that gives me the right. I’m not wise. I’m not clever.” He put an arm across his forehead. “All I am is scared.”

  For the first time since Zehava’s death, Chay stopped comparing father and son to Rohan’s lack. Zehava would have chosen a path and marched down it without any further thought. But the son differed from the father in constant examination for the right of things. Rohan questioned and doubted, sought deeper truths and hidden motivations. It would be the same when the High Prince’s death opened paths of even greater power to him. Rohan would never stride arrogantly down them, blind to all else, never questioning his right to do as he pleased. He would always question—and this was what would make him wise. At that moment Chay ceased regretting that the son was not more like the father. He would have followed either wherever they cared to lead, but with Rohan, he knew that the path would always be the right one.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  This time Sioned did not go to Feruche alone.

  As Ianthe’s time neared, Tobin and Maeta made quiet plans which they discussed with the reluctant Ostvel only when all was arranged and he could make no real objection. If he had hoped for an ending different from the one understood and unspoken all this time, that hope was now gone. Rohan and Chay were bogged down in the south, and though Tiglath’s fighters were now free to make an assault on Feruche, Sioned had ordered Walvis to stay in the city. The child must be taken in secret if she was to have any chance of presenting him as her own.

  That Ianthe would die was something equally understood, equally unspoken. One night in early winter, Tobin and Maeta described to Sioned plans for the infiltration of the castle. She merely nodded. No one mentioned Ianthe’s name.

  During the clearer days of autumn Ianthe had often strolled the battlements of Feruche, almost as if she knew Sioned would be watching. Her sons were usually with her and Sioned wondered bitterly why the Goddess had seen fit to give such wealth to such a woman. As Ianthe’s pregnancy advanced, the envy was sometimes more than Sioned could stand. But now Ianthe’s burden was too heavy to permit much walking. She slept uneasily in the huge bed with its dragon tapestries, for Rohan’s son rode restlessly in her womb. Envy turned to hate when Sioned caught sight of the great emerald sparkling from her finger. Ianthe was in possession of things not rightfully her own, and Sioned’s need to claim what was hers became a demand that threatened to destroy her hard-won balance.

  For some days after plans were confirmed for the journey to Feruche, Sioned lapsed into a strange, waiting silence. Tobin understood; as her own birthing-times had neared, she had grown detached, all thoughts and feelings directed inward. Sioned’s womb might be empty, but she was going through pregnancy as surely as Ianthe.

  One early winter night at moonrise, as clouds brushed the northern horizon, the alarm Sioned had been waiting for flushed servants out of bed at Feruche. Lingering long enough on moonlight to be sure this was no false labor, she smiled with an odd mixture of envy and satisfaction as Ianthe’s body arched in agonized spasms. Then she returned to Stronghold and sent for Tobin and Ostvel.

  “She’s early by forty days,” Sioned told them when they came to her rooms, sleep-rumpled and apprehensive. “I felt she might be. We leave tonight.”

  Soon thereafter three riders on Chay’s best horses were galloping north. Pale figures on pale horses, they rode in silence and made swift progress through the night made dazzling by three full moons. Sioned alone showed no fear. Tobin, schooled over the summer and autumn by Sioned in certain faradhi techniques, kept her mind busy reviewing what she had been taught but could not banish the intermittent quivers that ran through her body. Ostvel clenched and unclenched his fingers around his sword hilt, unable to protest and unable to stay behind. Neither of them dared speak to the woman who rode between them with her body straining eagerly forward, her green eyes blazing.

  Sioned took the lead during the day through hills where, earlier in the year, dragons had basked and battled and mated. She had used this back approach to Feruche before, but this time was sure of the path. In spring she had mistaken the way. The dark nightmare of that lonely journey had merged into the horror of Feruche and the return to Stronghold. But though this trip also had something dreamlike about it; everything seemed outlined in bright Fire like a conjure, with all the singing colors of her gifts making her lightheaded.

  Ten measures from Feruche they stopped, just beyond the first sentries, to rest for a little while after the long day’s fast ride. After dismounting and securing the horses, they walked the last of the road as night gathered behind them. The castle came within sight above the rocky hills, bathed in winter sun, its towers crowned by a golden glow that seeped down the walls like honey. Sioned paused for a moment to contemplate the beauty of Feruche, recalling that Rohan had promised it would be hers one day. And so it would, she told herself. This day.

  Sounds of revelry came from within the keep, drunken celebration of the princess’ safe delivery of her son. Sioned listened, a tiny smile touching her mouth from time to time. She was aware of Tobin and Ostvel standing behind her, waiting nervously. In her own mind she conjured up Maeta’s instructions of that spring, seeing her as surely as if the warrior was with her now.

  “There’s not a castle in the Desert I don’t know inside and out—and more to the point, how to get inside from out. There are more secrets here at Stronghold than just this grotto passage, but we’ll talk about them another time. Let me tell you about Feruche.”

  Sioned closed her eyes, visualizing the hidden
entry, the corridors carved out of the rock, the twists and turns she had memorized but had not yet used. At their end was the upper hallway leading to Ianthe’s chamber. A shudder ran through her, but she was not afraid. She felt nothing.

  “Sioned. . . .”

  Tobin’s whisper turned her head, and she nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s time I finished my work here.”

  She led them forward in the shadows below the sunlight, out of sight of the guardpost where she had been captured before. She had no worries about that this time; all of Feruche celebrated Ianthe’s fourth son, and the stones outside the castle were silent. She moved around the curtain wall to the place where castle and cliff joined. A chink in the stone. A thin knife blade inserted to work the invisible catch. A moment when Ostvel’s breath quickened with fear that the mechanism was too old and too long unused to function.

  The slab of rough-hewn rock slid soundlessly aside. Sioned slipped through first, concentrated for an instant, and produced a finger of Fire to see by. As Tobin and Ostvel moved into the narrow passage beside her, she inspected the workings of the entry. They had not been touched in Goddess alone knew how long, but the builders’ skill had been such that the system of weights and catches still functioned perfectly.

  The miniscule flame lit their way through the shoulder-wide passage, glanced off long-empty sconces rusting on the walls. The floor sloped up, turned sharply, then descended, and in places rotting planks had been set over water seeping in from the underground spring that allowed Feruche to live. But there were no rats, no webs, not the slightest sign or whisper of life here.